November 23, 2004 - Bikes, Bikes, Everywhere

We do two types of counting at Edhat.  There are the things we count that no one else would even dream of counting; like blueberries in a muffin, beans in a pound of coffee, and lights along the State Street/Hollister corridor.  And, then there are the things we count that don’t need any introduction.  They are things you just see and start counting.  It’s instinctual. When Charlie Babbitt dropped the box toothpicks on the floor in the movie, Rain Man, his savant brother had no choice but to count them and report the answer. What else was he to do?

So, when the dedicated staff of edhat.com goes out on assignments, we always ask the million-dollar question, what would Rain Man do?

Well, if Rain Man ever drove his car slowly in the driveway over to the Francisco Torres dorm at UCSB, there is no question what he would do.  He would see the ocean of bicycles that haphazardly cover the entire front area of the dorm, and he would count. And if Rain Man would count it, then so would we.  Yesterday the dedicated staff walked down the aisles of bike racks to do what had to be done.  We clicked our clicker for every back-tire that we saw.

It was high noon when we finished our count. The tally stood at 652.  But, we knew that we were not done.  You see, as the students buzzed in and out of the bike racks like bees around the hive, we realized that the noon count was not an accurate depiction of the bikes in the rack.  Some students, we could see, were away at class.  Students in class - what a concept! How could we have missed it?

The dedicated staff was not very happy with the prospect of only reporting the mid-day number to our subscribers this morning. It was hard to make headlamps or taillights out of the results if we only knew the 12 o’clock count.  And so, Ed, the perfectionist that he is, took it upon himself to do an evening count.  Just back from a dog count in Newfoundland, he put on his black coat (the nice one with the plaid lined pockets), brought out the Tallyman 2000 Clicker he had just bought on eBay, and he went to racks. There, he counted 931 bikes.  Apparently 279 of bikes had returned home to the nest that afternoon.

Ed was so excited that he could not wait to tell.  So on his way out of the bike racks, he approached a young coed who was unlocking her bike.

“There are 931 bikes here,” he said.

“Really!” she replied with a giant smile.

In case you didn’t know, there are roughly 1300 beds in the Francisco Torres Dorm. Using the nighttime bike count, that yields 0.72 bikes/dormer. It also means that there are at least 369 dormers without bikes.

We had two numbers, but we only asked for one in the day’s contest.  So, in the spirit of the upcoming holidays, we award two prizes – one for each number. NotAnHerb with a guess of 642 and Ed-ith with a guess of 937 each win an Edhat t-shirt and a 2005 Santa Barbara Axxess Card.

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